Ingo Günther, born in 1957, grew up in the
city
of Dortmund, Germany. In the 70s, travels took him to Northern Africa,
North
and Central America and Asia. He studied Ethnology and Cultural
Anthropology
at Frankfurt University (1977) before he switched to the Kunstakademie
Düsseldorf
in 1978, where he studied with Schwegler, Uecker and Paik (M.A. 1983).
In
the same year, he received a stipend from the Kunstakademie
Düsseldorf
for a residency at P.S.1 in New York. He received a DAAD grant the
following year and a Kunstfonds grant in 1987.

Günther's
early sculptural works with video led him towards more journalistic
oriented projects which he pursued in TV, print, and the art field.
Based in New York,
he played a crucial role in the evaluation and interpretation of
satellite
data gathered from political and military crisis zones; the results
were
distributed internationally through print media and TV news. The goal
was
to make military and ecological information, that was up to this point
inaccessible,
known to the public in order to have a direct impact on political
processes.
On an artistic level, the work with satellite data led to
Günther's contribution
to documenta 8 (1987), the installation K4 (C31) (Command Control
Communication
and Intelligence). In the same year, Günther received
accreditation
as a correspondent at the United Nations in NY.

In his
capacity
as artist, correspondent and author, he worked extensively with
Japanese
TV (NHK), covering topics that ranged from media studies to military
technology.Since 1989, Günther uses
globes as a medium for his artistic
and journalistic interests. In 1989, 9 months before the reunification
of
Germany, he founded the first independent TV station in Eastern Europe
Channel
X, Leipzig in order to contribute to the establishment of a free media
landscape.

The
interviews and research the artist did during a several months long
journey through the Cambodian
refugee camps in Thailand became the basis of a series of articles,
which
were published in the German newspaper taz. This journey and further
travels
to refugee camps around the world became the foundation for
Günther's concept of the Refugee Republic, on which he has been
working ever since.

Ingo
Günther has been teaching at the academy of art in Braunschweig
(1985) and Münster (1986/87), and at the San Francisco Art
Institute (1987). From 1990 to 1994
he has been a professor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.

In 1988, he
was
awarded the Kunstpreis Glockengasse (Cologne) and the Preis des
Kulturkreises
des Bundes der Deutschen Industrie. In 1996, he received the Stankowski
Award and in 1997, the ZKM/Siemens Medienkunstpreis. He was awarded the
Prize of the Sprengel Museum, Hanover in 2003.

EXHIBITIONS

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection)

1981 Kunstakademie/Kunsthalle Dusseldorf

1982 Koelnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Lenbach-Haus,Munich
[cat.]

1983 Museum of Modern Arts, New York
National Gallery, Westberlin [cat.]